felt tiny, malevolent surges of energy, too random and mobile to be spells or wards. Their presence was disturbingly similar to that of the fetch I’d destroyed in the hotel.
I came back to where I’d begun about ten minutes later.
“Anything?” Thomas asked.
“No wards. No mystic land mines,” I told him. “But I think there’s something in there.”
“Like what?”
“Like fetches,” I said. “Smaller than the big ones we’re after, and probably set to guard the doorway between here and the Nevernever.”
“They’ll try to ambush us when we go in,” Murphy said.
“Probably,” I said. “But if we know about it, we can turn it against them. When they come, hit them fast and hard, even if it seems like overkill. We can’t afford any injuries.”
Murphy nodded.
“What are we waiting for?” Thomas asked.
“More help,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not strong enough to open a stable passage to deep Faerie,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t tired, and I managed to get it open, I doubt it would stay that way for more than a few seconds.”
“Which would be bad?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah.”
“What would happen?” Charity asked quietly.
“We’d die,” I said. “We’d be trapped in deep Faerie, near the strongholds of all kinds of trouble, with no way to escape but to try to find our way to the portions of Faerie that are near Earth. The locals would eat us and spit out the bones before we got anywhere close to escape.”
Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “This isn’t exactly helping me keep my mind off my fear, man.”
“Shut up,” I told him. “Or I’ll move to my second initiative and start telling you knock-knock jokes.”
“Harry,” Murphy said, “if you knew you couldn’t open the door long enough to let us get the girl, how did you plan to manage it?”
“I know someone who can help. Only she’s totally unable to help me.”
Murphy scowled at me, then said, “You’re enjoying this. You just love to dance around questions and spring surprises when you know something the rest of us don’t.”
“It’s like heroin for wizards,” I confirmed.
An engine throbbed nearby, and tires made a susurrus on asphalt. A motorcycle prowled around the theater to its rear parking lot, bearing two helmeted riders. The rearmost rider swung down from the bike, a shapely woman in leather pants and a denim jacket. She reached up, took off her green helmet, and shook out her snow-white hair. It fell at once into a silken sheet without the aid of a brush or a comb. The Summer Lady, Lily, paused to give me a slight bow, and she smiled at me, her green eyes particularly luminous.
The bike’s driver proved to be Fix. The Summer Knight wore close-fitting black pants and a billowing shirt of green silk. He bore a rapier with a sturdy guard on his hip, and the leather that wrapped its handle had worn smooth and shiny. Fix put both helmets on a rack on the motorcycle, nodded at us, and said, “Good morning.”
I made introductions, though I went into few details beyond names and titles. When that was done, I told Lily, “Thank you for coming.”
She shook her head. “I am yet in your debt. It was the least I could do. Though I feel I must warn you that I may not be able to give you the help that you require.”
Meaning Titania’s compulsion to prevent Lily from helping me was still in force. But I’d thought of a way to get around that.
“I know you can’t help me,” I said. “But I wish to tell you that the onus of your debt to me has been passed to another in good faith. I must redress a wrong I have done to the girl named Molly Carpenter. To do so, I offer her mother your debt to me as payment.”
Fix barked out a satisfied laugh. “Hah!”
Lily’s mouth spread into a delighted smile. “Well done, wizard,” she murmured. Then she turned to Charity and asked, “Do you accept the wizard’s offer of payment, Lady?”
Charity looked a little lost, and she glanced at me. I nodded my head at her.
“Y-yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“So mote it be,” Lily said, bowing her head to Charity. “Then I owe you a debt, Lady. What may I do to repay it?”
Charity glanced at me again. I nodded and said, “Just tell her.”
Charity turned back to the Summer Lady. “Help us retrieve my daughter, Molly,” she said. “She is a prisoner of the fetches of the Winter Court.”